Aunt Mary - 1973 - Janus

Aunt Mary

1973

Janus

01. Path of your dream (4:06)

02. Mr. Kaye (2:01)

03. Nocturnal voice (6:06)

04. For all eternity (6:54)

Untitled - Hidden track (0:41)

05. Stumblin' stone (6:10)

06. All we've got to do is dream (2:53)

07. Candles of Heaven (5:26)

08. What a lovely day (5:15)

Bjoern Christiansen / guitar, vocal

Bengt Jensen / keyboards

Svein Gundersen / bass, piano and vocal

Kjetil Stensvik / drums, vocal

If anyone has seen fit to keep the memory of Norway's Aunt Mary alive, it has been the progressive rock crowd, always eager to pay respects to the names that the bigwig magazines might have missed at the time. With that preface, it is notable that Aunt Mary only graduated into the world of full-fledged prog with their third LP, Janus. The hard rock of their first two albums is met with a strong grasp of heavy psych, art pop and symphonic prog. Looking back at the album now, Janus doesn't really excel in any particular way. Rather, Aunt Mary culminated their career with an enjoyably varied and consistent piece of work.

Although 1972's Loaded was replete with proggy undertones, there was a great deal of new territory for Aunt Mary to explore on Janus. While some bands may have used the template of another band's sound to forge their own, Aunt Mary didn't settle for a single style. Sure, there's a certain closeness on "For All Eternity" to Yes Album-era Yes- "Mr. Kaye" might have even passed for one of the deep cuts off a psychedelic Beatles album. Hell, I'd even go one further and say there's a certain Bowie glam to "Nocturnal Voice". From organ-heavy symphonic rock to pop and heavy psych, Aunt Mary weren't trying to evolve or identify with a particular sound so much as taking a sample of each. Had Aunt Mary stuck around for a fourth album, I sure we'd have seen them make a more confirmed decision. The jack-of-all-trades approach undeniably comes at the cost of the album (and band) leaving a rather indistinct impression. Had Aunt Mary made a purebred symphonic prog, or a pop, or a glam rock album, they would have had an easier time selling Janus.

At the same time, there is something to be said for the kind of variety Aunt Mary tackled here. While the fact that they were willing to explore so many options means little by itself, the confidence Aunt Mary approached each style with is striking. With the stylistic difference, for instance, between the symphonic "Path of Your Dream" and quaint pop of "Mr. Kaye" is easily recognizable, the album flows so well together that it's easy to overlook the fact that that Aunt Mary are really shifting gears to begin with. Even beyond the eclectic angle, Janus has a near-immaculate sense of flow; even the goofy "Untitled" snippet that closes off the first side feels in place. Considering I would usually think of a band that jumped between styles like this as non-committal and undecided, it's all to Aunt Mary's credit that the album works together so well.

Janus is a remarkably consistent album, though calling it that limits the possibility of truly excellent, as well as weak material. The bluesy "Stumblin' Stone" or proggy "Candles of Heaven" would probably be my picks if the jury was ever out on choosing 'highlights' off of Janus, but there isn't a song here passionate enough, complex enough or otherwise ambitious enough to have nominated Aunt Mary for the big leagues. The band's performance kinda strikes me the same way. I like the Keith Emerson-y synth runs Bengt Jensen delivers on the album's proggier pieces, but even then it's never wild or nuanced enough to distinguish the band from so oh-so-many of their contemporaries. If in doubt, you can always tell how tight or technical a prog rock band is from the drumming; in this case, Kjetil Stensvik holds a steady beat for Aunt Mary, but personal flourishes are minimal. Their vocals fare a little better; three of the four members lend their voices in arts, although none really serve to replace the considerable charisma of former vocalist Jan Groth.

Janus is a strong, consistent and enjoyable album, and even so it feels like a disappointing place for Aunt Mary to have ended their career. Janus is demonstration of a young band playing with fresh styles, quickly gaining confidence with a considerably expanded range of styles. Had there been a fourth album from these guys, I'm near-certain it would have been even better than Janus. Whatever the case, Aunt Mary closed their career on their best note, and however short their journey together may have been, it resulted in at least one standout record.

Probably my favourite Aunt Mary album. Although their second album Loaded is very good too Janus might still be my personal favourite. The record is a really balanced totality with several impressive songs. Only "Mr. Kaye" feels like a filler. It's easily the weakest song of this LP but it's pretty OK too. The rest of the material is solid hard progressive rock. If I need to choose just one favourite song it might be "Nocturnal Voice". But as I said the album is a strong package so it's not that important to choose any standout tracks.

Aunt Mary's third and final studio album Janus is a highly collectable record and also probably their all time best. Loaded and Janus both are really good albums and worth giving a try for every progressive rock fan out there.

Aunt Mary - 1972 - Loaded

Aunt Mary

1972

Loaded

01. Playthings of the Wind (3:03)

02. Joinin' the Crowd (3:42)

03. Delight (2:44)

04. Upside Down (4:15)

05. Farewell My Friend Pt 1 (3:21)

06. Farewell My Friend Pt 2 (3:21)

07. Blowin' Tiffany (7:23)

08. Fire of My Lifetime (5:11)

09. G Flat Road (5:43)

- Bjoern Christiansen / guitar, vocal

- Bengt Jensen / keyboards

- Svein Gundersen / bass, piano and vocal

- Kjetil Stensvik / drums, vocal

Admitting my own bias as a reviewer, having first heard Aunt Mary's third (and final) album Janus before anything else, the knowledge that these guys would evolve into a full-fledged progressive act has no doubt coloured my impression of Loaded. While an eclectic progressive sound is usually preferable to the sort of psychedelic-tinged hard rock that flooded the early 70s, it's not the difference in style that makes Loaded the lesser testament in hindsight. Aunt Mary made themselves out to be an impressive hard rock act here, but with songwriting chops ringing true only around half the time, Loaded is left feeling less impressive than might befit a band of their thunderous energy.

It has everything to do with consistency. Beginning with the debut (which I've heard compared to the rockier side of Jethro Tull, and rightly so) Aunt Mary always had an inventive side to them. It would be wrong to say they 'evolved' into progressive rock on Janus- it was just a matter of highlighting an element that was there all along. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the best cuts on Loaded are those in which Aunt Mary are openly strutting their progressive side. Make no mistake; Loaded is a hard rock album and never strays far from that path, but the particularly sophisticated riffs in "Joinin' the Crowd" and inventive flair of "Fire of My Lifetime" feel cut from a different cloth than the regular sort of 12 bar bluesy same-old that influenced so many of these bands.

As I said before, listening to Janus has influenced the way I see Loaded. The problem is not that Aunt Mary were playing familiar blues rock for the most part; it's that the mileage of their songwriting success varies to the point of a fault. "Playthings of the Wind" is a solid tune, and as I mentioned before, "Fire of my Lifetime" is a fantastic song, and probably the best tune Aunt Mary ever wrote. On the other hand, "Delight" feels like a shrill half-baked ditty at best, and "Upside Down" is plainly boring- with its tired blues rehashes, it sounds like a poor man's Rolling Stones, without the benefits of that band's natural talent as songwriters.

Even "Blowin' Tiffany"- eight minutes long, and my greatest initial hope for the album- feels sort of aimless; it's as if Aunt Mary felt the urge to write a hard rock epic, but lacked the inspiration for it at the time. Be it progressive or your garden variety hard rock; Aunt Mary are successful half of the time with both on Loaded. So much of the criticism I see regarding this album attacks the album for not being 'progressive' enough. That is not the issue at all. Aunt Mary could have made an excellent hard rock record just as well as a progressive one. Where Janus succeeded over Loaded was not necessarily a matter of style, but the fact that they made each song somehow memorable. That album flowed. This one flows around half the time.

More enduring fans of Aunt Mary seem to be torn between this and Janus as their favourite. I'll conclude the review on a more positive note: while Loaded's songwriting is impressive only half the time, they had a thunderous, organic punch to their sound. I think they lost a bit of it on Janus. For my money, it's that album that will stand the test of time (as best as Aunt Mary can, at least) but Loaded has got its moments.

Admitting my own bias as a reviewer, having first heard Aunt Mary's third (and final) album Janus before anything else, the knowledge that these guys would evolve into a full-fledged progressive act has no doubt coloured my impression of Loaded. While an eclectic progressive sound is usually preferable to the sort of psychedelic-tinged hard rock that flooded the early 70s, it's not the difference in style that makes Loaded the lesser testament in hindsight. Aunt Mary made themselves out to be an impressive hard rock act here, but with songwriting chops ringing true only around half the time, Loaded is left feeling less impressive than might befit a band of their thunderous energy.

It has everything to do with consistency. Beginning with the debut (which I've heard compared to the rockier side of Jethro Tull, and rightly so) Aunt Mary always had an inventive side to them. It would be wrong to say they 'evolved' into progressive rock on Janus- it was just a matter of highlighting an element that was there all along. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the best cuts on Loaded are those in which Aunt Mary are openly strutting their progressive side. Make no mistake; Loaded is a hard rock album and never strays far from that path, but the particularly sophisticated riffs in "Joinin' the Crowd" and inventive flair of "Fire of My Lifetime" feel cut from a different cloth than the regular sort of 12 bar bluesy same-old that influenced so many of these bands.

As I said before, listening to Janus has influenced the way I see Loaded. The problem is not that Aunt Mary were playing familiar blues rock for the most part; it's that the mileage of their songwriting success varies to the point of a fault. "Playthings of the Wind" is a solid tune, and as I mentioned before, "Fire of my Lifetime" is a fantastic song, and probably the best tune Aunt Mary ever wrote. On the other hand, "Delight" feels like a shrill half-baked ditty at best, and "Upside Down" is plainly boring- with its tired blues rehashes, it sounds like a poor man's Rolling Stones, without the benefits of that band's natural talent as songwriters.

Even "Blowin' Tiffany"- eight minutes long, and my greatest initial hope for the album- feels sort of aimless; it's as if Aunt Mary felt the urge to write a hard rock epic, but lacked the inspiration for it at the time. Be it progressive or your garden variety hard rock; Aunt Mary are successful half of the time with both on Loaded. So much of the criticism I see regarding this album attacks the album for not being 'progressive' enough. That is not the issue at all. Aunt Mary could have made an excellent hard rock record just as well as a progressive one. Where Janus succeeded over Loaded was not necessarily a matter of style, but the fact that they made each song somehow memorable. That album flowed. This one flows around half the time.

More enduring fans of Aunt Mary seem to be torn between this and Janus as their favourite. I'll conclude the review on a more positive note: while Loaded's songwriting is impressive only half the time, they had a thunderous, organic punch to their sound. I think they lost a bit of it on Janus. For my money, it's that album that will stand the test of time (as best as Aunt Mary can, at least) but Loaded has got its moments.

Aunt Mary - 1970 - Aunt Mary

Aunt Mary

1970

Aunt Mary

01. Whispering farewell (4:00)

02. Did you notice (3:18)

03. Theres a lot of fish in the sea (3:51)

04. I do and I did (4:52)

05. 47 steps (4:39)

06. Rome wasn't built in one day (2:59)

07. Come in (3:29)

08. Why don't you try yourself (2:28)

09. The ball (3:33)

10. All my sympathy for Lily (3:21)

11. Yes, by now Ive reached the end (2:51)

Bjoern Christiansen / guitar, vocal

Per Ivar Fure / flute, harmonica, saxophone, mouth-organ and vocal

Jan Leonard Groth / keyboards, guitar and vocals

Svein Gundersen / bass, piano and vocal

Kjetil Stensvik / drums, vocal

I was surprised to find this to be the most approachable, and probably the closest to actual progressive music, of all the Aunt Mary albums. There isn’t as much emphasis on keyboards as there would be on the next three records (although there is a bit more piano than on ‘Loaded’ or ‘Janus’), and the presence of flute, Jew’s harp and harmonica is more noticeable.

The band reminds me a lot of a stripped-down Blood, Sweat & Tears on their more free-form songs such as “Did You Notice?”, “Come In” and “47 Steps”. Guitarist/vocalist Bjoern Christiansen has this sort of Joe Cocker thing working for him that would become even more pronounced later, but here against the horns and piano he sounds more like that almost jazzy sound that BST and even Chicago had in their early days.

But this is a band in transition from the sixties to the seventies, and that is quite evident on tracks like “Rome Wasn't Built in one Day” where the guitar shows some mild psych tendencies, the bass is heavier than most seventies bands, and the band shows a preference for layered, harmonizing vocals in the vein of CSNY or the Byrds.

Like their other albums the songs here are mostly short, and none of them is complex to any degree. Some, such as “Why Don't you try Yourself?” sound to me as if there was a fair amount of improvisation going on in the studio since the organist and guitarist seem to go off for a couple minutes and then everything just stops. A decent display of keyboarding on that track, but as a cohesive song it comes off as rather disjointed and incomplete.

“The Ball” is similar, but here the band sounds like they’re trying to pull of some sort of Ekseption-like Bach-on-organ interpretation that turns into a free-form mini-jam session with vocals not quite matching the music. In reality this kind of irreverent and totally non-commercial music is one of the reasons we prog fans seek this stuff out though; the rough edges and experimentation are what make it fun to listen to. Toward the end of this one I start to wonder if these guys maybe took some influences from Arthur Brown even.

The album ends with the short, heavy organ “Yes, By Now I've Reached the End” that sounds, if you can imagine this, like a Norwegian Jim Morrison trying to sound apocalyptic and somber. He doesn’t really pull it off, but nice effort, and the organ presence here signals the band’s direction for their two albums.

Eleven tracks present an interesting mixture of psychedelic, blues and jazz with some prog tendencies. Each track has a memorable melodie with short, but sweet to ears solo part from musicians. Jan Groth with his hammond makes a unique atmosphere on tracks like "Whispering farewell" and "Rome wasn't bult in one day". Alongside with with guitarist Bjorn Christiansen they provide some strong vocal - separetly and together. Their fromula of keyboard-oriented progressive rock later will be used by such legendary norvegian groups as Polol Vah and Titanic, but musicians from Aunt Mary were the first on this way. Great album by a great band! Should be heard by any lover of early prog.